red panda

11 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Hierarchy have made a bit of a rod for their own back but injuries permitting, 7th-10th coupled with a genuine play-off push would still represent some progress.

Expenditure in Janaury and pressure will rise further.

Agree with this, but not sure what else they could have said.  Perhaps a bit naive in not realising that some of things they said would be carved onto tablets of stone, never forgotten and taken absolutely literally by some fans.  Can you imagine what the reaction would have been had they sacked NP and then said "progress was too slow, the football wasn't great, so something needed to change. We're kind of hoping that Liam will do a bit better than Nigel and perhaps get us into the top half this season", which may be closer to what they really believe 

4 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I’m not sure of the root, but we seemed to be able to get the ball out to Pring quite high relatively quickly, Tanner slightly deeper, but seemed to struggle how to get back infield or forward from there.  I’m all for coming back out and across and down the other side to open up spaces, but we couldn’t do that.

Quite a bit made of the press, and it was different, and at times we did it pretty well (for about a 20 minute spell).  But I don’t think our press was the worst under Nige anyway.  And we allowed QPR to get the ball to Smyth and Willock 1v1 far too often.

Those two things were my main observations.  The third was, we didn’t hit many long balls, so rather than play a bit of a hopeful ball under pressure, we tried to “make a pass”.

So, I’m hoping to see different things knit together over time, but at least I know some of the things that I’m looking out for next game.

He can play wherever, it wasn’t like he just sat in front of the back four, he was operating as more of 6 and 8 combined, if that makes sense.  Personally I think he’s better playing from a bit deeper (not DM though), rather than a 10, but he did more when he moved forward after the subs.  But I think that was partly because we played better as a team in that period and we actually got some moves going.

Indeed, I'm not sure we played any long balls at all in the first half.  In the second half it looked as if the players had been given permission to try the occasional long ball, though usually hit with purpose rather than just hope.  That did improve things, as there was a bit of variety (and probably gave QPR a bit more to think about).  I'm not sure Max ever kicked long (except for the odd clearance and maybe right at the end), so there were far fewer throw-ins than normal 

Positives for me were the clean sheet and we no longer simply hoof balls in the general direction of Sam and expect him to work miracles. Work in progress. 

2 hours ago, tin said:

I hope the Lansdowns, and Tinnion, all resign if we fail to make the top six. They’ve been very open about that being the goal and in some ways I feel for Manning working under that pressure, and for Nige who had to deal with that. 

This is not “the best squad we’ve had in my time here”, nor do “we have a top-10 budget” as spuriously claimed by JL last week. But these are the goals set for Manning and if he doesn’t achieve them, the board needs to be accountable. 

Err ... I'm not quite sure an owner can simply "resign", and we might have something of a cashflow problem if they did.

6 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

The fact I'd never heard of Lommel until a few days ago speaks volumes, hence why I easily forgot about it when posting. 

To appease you I'll change it to only head coach role in England  

But the point still stands, if we heavily backed him in the Jan window and we do well and he ***** off in March to a Luton or Bournemouth then we'd be pissed off too.

Indeed

3 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

Come on Pete. If we had signed an inexperienced manager who had been sacked from his only job and then gave him the money to spend that he demanded, got players to buy in and sign new contracts and then ****** off at the 1st opportunity then we'd also be pissed off. 

Even tho you can understand why he's left them, we'd be pissed off it that happened to us. 

Just adding a bit of perspective. 

Really?  Who knew  ?

But with apologies for being boring, it was absolutely not his only job.  He's been coaching for a long time, and was head coach at Lommel before MK.

I can understand Oxford fans' frustrations at LM jumping ship for a club that, on paper, is only a few places above them.  It's possible that if he does well then a bigger club will come calling.  But many Premier League clubs (including Bournemouth) seem to look overseas these days, or to others with previous PL experience.  And hopefully Nathan Jones' wrecking of Southampton will discourage other clubs from dipping into the Championship for their managers in the near future 

40 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

Thank you for a considered and insightful post. 

But please, let’s put to bed this ‘loyal club with managers’. We’ve been loyal once. Once ever. And that was to a family friend. Cotterill - no loyalty. Pearson - no loyalty. 

The Lansdowns seem to have been afforded this ‘patient owners’ tag, it’s peddled by Sky because they allowed Johnson to lose a million in a row, twice. And with respect, its bollocks. Take nepotism out of the equation and They’re no more patient than any other owners in reality (barring maybe Watford).

I hope you’re right about Manning. Good luck for the season.  

Sorry, I can't let this go.  The owners are patient and it's not just special treatment.  Watford are an extreme example, but there are lots of other trigger happy owners in the Championship.  In the last ten years, Birmingham have had 13 managers, Cardiff 12, Huddersfield 15, Leeds 14, Leicester 12, QPR 12, Sheffield Wednesday 14, Southampton 11, Stoke 10, Sunderland 16, Swansea 13 and West Brom 16.

These stats come from soccerbase.com and include caretakers (I've only shown those in double figures).  On exactly the same basis, we've had 7 or possibly 8 if you count both Curtis F and Liam M (and it's only that high because SO'D sneaks into the period by a few weeks).  If anyone wants to recalculate the stats without caretakers, be my guest.  But I think you'll find a similar picture.

Sorry to let facts get in the way of another anti-Lansdown moan.  And for those wondering, the figure for Watford is 21.

19 hours ago, phantom said:

For anyone that has been to QPR before if they weren't selling restricted view seats I'm not sure how many apart from the first two rows in the top tier would be sold

I'm in row B, I think quite central, and my ticket still says Restricted Sight Line   I'm guessing I won't be able to see the corners

1 hour ago, RedRoss said:

Wow you are relentless with your anti Manning agenda. Over the last few hours you've said:

Promotion or bust because JL says so even though you don't respect JL.

Has to win straight away no excuses.

The players clearly hate him because he's not Nige.

He's not credited the current players enough even though he did and then compared it strangely to Clough telling Leeds players to rip up their medals.

He'll over complicate football but football needs to instructed simply so it doesn't confuse the players (again I'm guessing another reference to Clough liking to keep it simple, I'm sure you've just watched a documentary recently and think you've cracked the manager code)

You've automatically associated LJ with Manning because simply they are both young.

I've probably missed some other golden nuggets from you. You really need to get over Nigel leaving. I know it's been hard on you since he left. Everytime you get into bed with NP pjamas on, in NP bedsheets and then waking up to a NP mug of tea. He's gone mate. It's fine to be critical you've more than done that. Like a broken record infact!

 

 

 

I think they might have mentioned something that happened at Milton Keynes?  Can't quite remember what ...

Just now, Mr Popodopolous said:

I meant Sunday. Doh.

It's been a long few days ...

2 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

FWIW Peach ie co host of our friends at SecondTierPod called it as a wrong decision on Friday.

Them aside, FA wise would be interested to see the reasoning.

Am I being thick here, or did Peach call it a wrong decision the day before the match??  Lottery numbers please (by DM, don't tell anyone else)

Also on the BBC football website too https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67333709.  They say he was sacked by MK Dons 

Nevertheless, welcome Liam, 3 points on Saturday please

23 minutes ago, GrumpyGit said:

Chris Hogg still lives in the Ipswich area and commutes to Oxford. If his family don’t want to move to Oxfordshire, would they move to Bristol?  Manning might be good but is that because he has Hogg.

Is this definitely true?  Ipswich to Oxford is a 3-4 hour drive each way, or slightly quicker via a soul and wallet-destroying train journey into and across London.  Seems unlikely to me.  But if it were true then a move to Bristol would be a perfect excuse to stop the madness (either by moving house or by staying away during the week).

1 minute ago, IAmNick said:

Lots of the stuff Lee talked about was very valid imo, he just didn't have a good way of explaining/communicating it and relied too much on little quips and phrases that just sounded... naff. The annoyance for me was that he overindulged himself on those aspects, not that he talked about them in the first place.

However, just because another manager views the game in a similar way doesn't mean we should dismiss it out of hand. Even if lots of managers - Pearson even, wouldn't use those words, I'm absolutely sure he thinks about the same things and likely in the same rough terms.

Give the bloke a chance ffs.

I agree about LJ.  Football is a game of tiny margins, so any little thing (whether it's the length of the grass, knowledge of how the NHS deal with crises or whatever) that increases your chances is worth pursuing.  Wenger was considered radical when he tried to get his players eating better food.  LJ's problem was that he wasn't good enough at the fundamentals, so all these little boosts weren't enough to compensate for his more significant shortcomings

7 minutes ago, Spud21 said:

Even if that is the expectation from the on highs, it doesn't change a jot how we are perceived in the footballing world outside Bristol, which is an absolute backwater that has never done anything. 

We would need to be in and around the top 6 consistently for 4/5 years minimum before the footballing world considers us anything more than a below average championship club. 

3 minutes ago, supercidered said:

Yes Oxford. A team that plays the Gas. It's a crap league.

If we aspire to be just a middling to small championship side then this is the type of appointment that we should have expected and accept. 

It's got nothing to do with arrogance. If the hierarchy want City not to be an average team in the Championship then we need to stop acting like we are just an average club. It really is that simple. 

I get what you're saying.  But Rome wasn't built in a day.  Up to 2017 we were a club yo-yoing between League One and the Championship, spending more time in the former than the latter, and struggling to stay up when we did get promoted.  And two of the seasons since then were disrupted by Covid.  Yes I really want us to kick on further, but it's not long ago at all that we would have bitten anyone's hand off if offered the prospect of being an "average" Championship club.

2 minutes ago, supercidered said:

They did sack him. Apparently, because he had to sell his best 2 players then loads of posters on here think that is fine and dandy. Also apparently, not his fault that he couldn't Coach the remaining 23 players in to accumulating more tan just 15 points from over 20 games.

He must be bloody good at interviews.

So he was sacked from his first English managerial post .  So what?  He still had a win ratio of 48% when he left.  He's young enough to be learning and improving.  And how many managers have never been sacked?? 

3 minutes ago, phantom said:

Experience comes from playing and managing, he's not got either of any note 

Declan Rice... So you said he helped develope him?? 

I'd have thought the West Ham coaches may disagree, we know how much an U23s manager gets involved 

Don't know why you're so negative about this.  Obviously others were involved, but Manning's on the list of coaches that had a direct influence on Rice's progress and helped him get where he is today.  Straight from the horses' mouth here.

Welcome Liam, and don't worry about the grumpy naysayers.

1 minute ago, westonred said:

The only way the Lansdowns can get the fans back on side is to throw money into the transfer kitty and get in some marque signings in Jan

Even if they do that, there will the usual moaners asking why they didn't make the same money available to Nige!

I'm pleased with this (if true).  I liked Nigel but couldn't shake off the feeling that we weren't improving very fast.  LM's career win ratio is 47.9% 

30 minutes ago, The Bard said:

Maybe he's looked at what's happened and thought wrong club.

 

Understandable 

Or maybe he's looked at this thread and thought wrong club?

If you're reading Liam , we'll get behind you once you're in place. Fans will go back to blaming the Board and/or Technical Director. And the club does have a good track record of giving managers time. 

7 minutes ago, KeithWelch'sTash said:

I know we have all moved on.

I know we have bigger fish to fry at our own club.

but do we all secretly want Bournemouth to go down?

I think I do

Interested why you want them to go down.  On balance, I want them to stay up because I want Kelly, Semenyo and Scott to do well.  But part of me wants them to go down purely because of the way they treated GO'N.

Do I want them to go down simply because they signed some of our players?  Absolutely not.  A few posters on here seem outraged that we've lost players to a club like Bournemouth - my message to them is get over it, they are an established PL club unlike us (for the moment)

51 minutes ago, steviestevieneville said:

Not in this case . Why don’t you change your user name to. The lansdowns apologist 

Merson was talking absolute rubbish in that clip.  It doesn't make anyone a "lansdowns apologist" for pointing that out.

23 minutes ago, phantom said:

...

Bear in mind this is only a double decker bus so the capacity is limited

...

So they're not using the triple deckers even though the Tube is shut?  Boo!  Kahn out!

11 minutes ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

The three phrases that follow it, ffs. And more besides. Are you a WUM or genuinely stupid? It's one or the other. 

What a charming response